. Champney's arm chair to the other casement window. She
resumed her seat and work.

"How are you getting on with the napkins?" the mistress of Champ-au-Haut
inquired after a quarter of an hour's silence in which she was busied
with some letters.

"Fine--see?" She held up a corner for her inspection. "This is the
tenth; I shall soon be ready for the big table cloth."

"Bring them to me."

Aileen obeyed, and showed her the monogram, A C, wrought by her own deft
fingers in the finest linen.

"There's no one like a Frenchwoman to teach embroidery; you've done them
credit." Aileen dropped a mock courtesy. "Which one taught you?"

"Sister Ste. Croix."

"Is she the little wrinkled one?"

"Yes, but I've fallen in love with every wrinkle, she's a perfect
dear--"

"I didn't imply she wasn't." Mrs. Champney was apt to snap out at Aileen
when, according to her idea, she was "gushing" too much. The girl had
ceased to mind this; she was used to it, especially during her three
years of attendance on this invalid. "Who designed this monogram?"

"She did; she can draw beautifully."

Mrs. Champney put on her glasses to examine in detail the exquisite
lettering, A C.

Aileen leaned above her, smiling to herself. How many loving thoughts
were wrought into those same initials! How many times, while her fingers
were busy fashioning them, she had planned to make just such for her
very own! How often, as she wrought, she had laid her lips to the A C,
murmuring to herself over and over again, "Aileen--Champney,
Champney--Aileen," so filling and satisfying with the sound of this
pleasing combination her every loving anticipation!

She was only waiting for the "word", schooling herself in these last six
weeks to wait patiently for it--the "word" which should make these
special letters her legitimate own!

The singing thoughts that ring in the consciousness of a girl who gives
for the first time her whole heart to her lover; the chanted prayers to
her Maker, that rise with every muted throb of the young wife's heart
which is beating for two in anticipation of her first motherhood--who
shall dare enumerate them?

The varied loving thoughts in this girl's quick brain, which was fed by
her young pulsing heart--a heart single in its loyalty to one during all
the years since her orphan childhood, were intensified and illumined by
the inherent quickening power of a vivid imagination, and inwrought with
these two letters that stood,